Packaging Tips: Under 5 Weeks Till Christmas

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With the festive period underway it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle and forget about the issues that come from increased purchasing which can easily be avoided. Here are a few Christmas packaging tips to consider for your business, working through the Christmas season…

Shut Down Periods

Over the Christmas period a large number of manufacturers tend to adopt what is known as a shut down period, whereby production stops on the last working day before Christmas and resumes again on the first working day of the New Year.

At Davpack, this means pre-empting purchasing levels and stocking up on more packaging materials so our customers are not left without! With that, we encourage our customers to do so also, so as not to be left short. This positive stock movement prevents the unfortunate event of running out on packaging supplies and being unable to ship important deliveries.

Stocking Up

It may be difficult to pre-empt customer buying decisions during the lead up towards Christmas, so here a few suggestions to help prepare your business…

Decide whether you are continuing business as normal, offering a limited service or shutting down completely during the festive period.

If you’re a fairly new business and are unsure how much orders may increase at this time of year, it’s probably worth ordering 20-30% more in products and packaging in your next order to keep up with the amount of sales orders you’re likely to receive.

If you have a few years worth of order history, compare the figures of the last quarter against each year to provide insight into what is expected for the coming period to stock up on exactly what you’ll need.

Consider ordering a further level of product and packaging stock to enable you to fulfil orders into the new year, rather than needing to order again on the first day back in January.

Courier Lead Times

A large number of businesses use an external courier as standard to support the transportation of orders, so this reliance is further emphasised during the festive period with the same levels of service expected. However, with businesses getting busier so do our couriers and with that lead times have a tendency to increase, with service levels beginning to decline.

Here are a few tips to help maintain great service over the next 6 weeks:

Consider hiring temporary staff to increase efficiency – by getting orders dispatched quicker, it leaves more time for delivery within the expected timeframe.

Investing in transit monitors – these feedback trackers tell a story on how a parcel has been handled whilst on transit, to give your customers the comfort in knowing their items have been looked after on route!

Introduce a supporting courier to manage the overflow of orders where necessary.

Dispatch

Ensure your team has had the sufficient training to enable them to avoid picking and packing errors as much as possible. This not only helps the business maximise profit by saving on unprecedented duplicate order costs, fewer repeat processes save on time and labour internally, whilst keeping your customers satisfied.

Rick Stanford

Rick has been a salesman in the packaging supplies business for more than thirty years. Now semi-retired, he divides his time between tending his allotment in north Devon, getting depressed at the continuing travails of his home-town football club Macclesfield Town, and sharing his considerable experience and knowledge with the readers of the Davpack blog.
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